


After Life

by one_gay_beanie



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18877174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_gay_beanie/pseuds/one_gay_beanie
Summary: What comes after the end?  Faith, with the help of a certain blonde witch, finds that it's not at all what she expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the odder pieces I've written, but I cannot get it out of my head and so it's going on the page. Chapters will be posted irregularly, as I finish them, but I hope y'all enjoy.

Falling through an open door. Cool air. Quiet music that seems too ephemeral to be real. And then a curtain of blonde hair. Familiar blonde hair, but not so familiar that she can place it. More like something from a dream or a half-remembered photograph. Finally, there’s the voice.

“Faith, sweetie, just breathe. The disorientation only lasts a few moments, and then you’ll be alright. Slow breaths, in and out, and let me know when you’re ready to stand. I’ve got you.”

 A slow blink, and the room begins to fade into view. It’s a dive bar, the kind she’s been in a million times before. The only difference is the company, a woman whose name starts with a T. “I know you. Why do I know you?” An enigmatic smile, then, one that only pulls up half a mouth but lights up the eyes above it.

 “Give it a second. You’ll know everything you need to know, I promise. It just takes a second for your brain to catch up with you.” What did that mean? Then, like a lightning bolt, recollection. The Bronze, a lifetime before. Pictures on Willow’s wall and in Dawn’s room. Pictures that had survived the fall of Sunnydale.

 “Tara. You’re Tara.”

 Gentle hands helped her to her feet, and Tara’s smile grew. “Got it in one, Faith.” There was something, though, something that gnawed at her. An important fact, maybe _the_ most important fact, and she couldn’t find the handle on it…until she did.

 “You’re dead.”

 “I am.”

 “So either you’re back…” the alternative hangs in the air, and Tara confirmed it with a sad nod of her head. “Or I’m dead. Well, fuck.” It was always meant to happen, of course – slayers didn’t have long lives. Not even now that Buffy had changed the world. “Wait, so what does that mean – what is this? Heaven? Or is hell a honky tonk bar? I could believe it, but it’d be weird.”

 Tara’s laugh was melodic and soft, and her hair fluttered around her shoulders as she shook her head. “It’s neither. Welcome to Afterlife, Faith. Let’s go take a seat at the bar, you can get yourself a drink, and I’ll explain everything you need to know.”

 The stools were dark oak, the kind that broke heavily over people’s backs in a fight. The bar was unmanned, and she looked around for help before noticing Tara’s impish smile. “So what’s the deal, blondie? I gotta pour my own?”

 “Not exactly. What do you want? You name it, anything that was ever poured on Earth is in stock. All you’ve gotta do is tell me and it’s yours.”

 That had to be bullshit. Even in the afterlife, there was no way that something like that was possible. Especially in a bar that looked no bigger than some of the places she’d haunted in Boston during her misspent youth. But if Tara wanted to play games, then she’d make her work for it. “Bottle of Bud Ice – the one with the penguin commercials, those things cracked me up. Extra cold.”

 “Watch.” Tara shut her eyes for a moment, gesturing toward Faith before snapping her fingers loudly. Before she could even ask what the gesture was meant to accomplish, Faith looked down and found a bottle at hand. So cold, in fact, that she couldn’t wrap a hand around it until it warmed up.

 “What in the absolute fuck…does that work for me?”

 “Works for anyone, love. Think of something, snap your fingers…actually that part’s not even necessary. I do it because it helps me focus, but when you’re practiced enough you can just picture what you want and it’ll be there.” That sounded like an even bigger pile of bullshit, but the cold bottle in her hand was enough to convince her otherwise. Concentrating for a second to picture a bowl of peanuts, she snapped the fingers on her left hand and a bowl appeared.

 “I’ll be damned. Alright, tell you what. I’m going to drink and eat, while you give me the rundown on what’s happening here. Starting with whether the dead can get drunk.” Cold beer down a parched throat was a good argument that the bar might just be heaven after all. Salty peanuts were nearly enough to seal the deal.

 Tara manifested herself a diet coke, leaning against the bar and exhaling slowly. “Good place to start. No, you won’t get drunk. You can, if you want to, but it won’t just happen by itself. You get the good parts of drinking, from taste to sensation, but you’ll never get sick and you never have to use the bathroom. Truth be told you don’t even have to eat or drink; I just enjoy the habit of it.” Faith suspected she would feel the same, especially with the knowledge that she wouldn’t get drunk or have a hangover. “Now I need you to answer a question for me. See all the doors around the outside of the bar? Can you read the signs above them?”

 The doors had escaped her attention utterly. They were spaced evenly, but there were too many of them to fit inside the bar. In fact, the proportions of the place didn’t make any sense at all. The signs, though, wavered stubbornly like an old videotape that needed its tracking adjusted. “No. Should I be able to?”

 “You will. If you can’t yet, then we’ll talk about something else first.” Faith’s gaze suddenly swivelled back toward her.

 “Wait. Who else is here? From Sunnydale, I mean?” The thought that she couldn’t remember the dead was heartrending in ways that she didn’t expect. “Who beat me here?”

 Tara’s smile turned from impish to comforting in the space of a second, and Faith found it wasn’t hard to see what Willow had fallen so hard for. “Hardly anyone, sweetie. The potentials who fell in the Hellmouth. Anya. Gunn – I know you asked about Sunnydale, but I’ll give you the Los Angeles list as well. Oh, and Wesley and Fred.” Faith’s arm jerked, and she had to grab the bottle of beer before it took a tumble.

 “Fred? I thought Giles said her soul was gone. Destroyed.”

 “You can’t destroy a soul, Faith.” Her tone was explanatory without condescension, something Faith appreciated. “I know Giles said it, but he got that one wrong. She’s here, with Wesley, and they both look happy." Her eyes twinkled, just a little, as Faith looked around for the souls in question. “Not here as in right here. They’ve gone elsewhere. But we’ll get to that part when you can read the doors. That’s the whole list, though.”

 Her thoughts were derisive – how could she have been the first of them to fall? But maybe there was a good reason. An act of heroism, some noble gesture that had saved her from the hell she deserved. After all, why else would she be sipping a beer across from Tara? “Do you know how I died?” Tara seemed to know everything else.

 “I don’t. But if you want to see it I can show you how. For the time being, though, let’s keep talking. I’ve watched my own, and it’s not a really enjoyable experience.”

 “Alright, let’s talk. Why do I look like I’m seventeen?” Her reflection in the mirror behind the bar had finally caught her eye, and while it felt like vanity to even think it she couldn’t help but notice things were a little higher and tighter than she remembered.

 “Did you watch The Matrix?” The non answer made her blink, and she nodded in reply. “You know that part where Morpheus is telling Neo about how he looks inside? Without the plugs, new clothes…he calls it residual self-image. It’s like that. You look how you want to look, and you can change anything you want about yourself. After all, it wouldn’t really be good for anyone to walk around the place like this.” Tara’s image shuddered and revealed a gaping exit wound in her chest. “Much better to exist the way we want.”

 That actually made sense, as much as any of this did. Faith sipped her beer and crunched some peanuts, letting everything she’d learned soak in. Tara, for her part, sat patiently and waited without comment. Almost as if she’d done this before, more than once. One more thing Faith would have to ask her when the time seemed right.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been in Cleveland, as it turned out. While Tara had warned her to leave well enough alone, she’d needed the closure that seeing it would bring. A grimy alley, a late-night patrol that included herself, Dawn and a few of the newer girls whose names escaped her. A loud roar, a sudden crash, and the appearance of a demon none of them had ever seen before were Faith’s death knell, even if she hadn’t realized it at the time. The newest girl of the group, a petite redhead with just a little too much confidence, charged the beast and was cut down. They’d begun a retreat then, but the creature had lunged toward Dawn and left Faith no choice but to push her aside and take the hit. It had nearly split her in two, and even from a birds’ eye view Faith knew there had been no hope for her after that.

“Turn it off.” Had she been able to throw up, she would have in that moment. Instead she was doubled over, with an almost psychosomatic bad taste in her mouth. “God, just turn it off.”

“I’m sorry, Faith,” Tara made a gesture and the window into her past vanished. “I know it’s hard to see.”

“Not your fault. You warned me not to.”

“But you were always a stubborn one. Have a bit more beer, okay? Your head should be almost clear by now, and you’re going to have a lot more questions. It always takes a while to sink in. Get up when you feel able, and we’ll go for a walk. Do you fancy a game of pool?”

“Yeah, I – no, wait. Dawn. Did Dawn get out of that okay?” She couldn’t believe it had taken so long for her to think of that. Tara looked away in a way that didn’t evoke shiftiness but seemed to indicate that she was looking for something and shook her head when she found it. “No. No sign of her, or any of the others.”

Faith bit her lip. “I might be prying into something you can’t tell me, but how is it you know all this shit?”

There was another faraway look before she got the answer she’d half expected. “It’ll be easier to explain when you see the doors. But for the record I can tell you anything you want. There are no secrets up here; those are for the living. There might be things that I don’t know, but if those come up then I’ll do my best to find out for you.”

“Fair deal.” Faith drained her bottle only to find it refilled a moment later. “Hot damn. Alright, where’s the table? You know I’m going to destroy you at this, right?” Tara’s answering chuckle made her smile in response even as her mind struggled to process the fog she still wandered in. “Oh, I get it. There’s no table unless we make one, yeah?”

“That’s a lot of questions to answer at once, sweetie. First of all, don’t be overconfident. I’ve had a lot of time to play games since I got here and it turns out I kind of like pool. And yes, the table doesn’t just sit in a spot and wait for us.” Despite the other thoughts on her mind, it was difficult to avoid a longing look at the way Tara’s jeans clung to her ass and Faith looked away quickly. They walked together, a distance from the bar, but never seemed to get close to a wall.

Faith’s brow furrowed as they came to a stop, in a spot that seemed just like any other. “How big is this bar, exactly?”

“Infinite.” That cleared up exactly nothing, but Faith waited patiently despite her natural inclination to press. “Think of it like a tower. The tallest tower you can imagine, with a billion floors that are all the same. Now picture all of those floors collapsed on top of each other. Infinite space, compressed. That’s why there’s no other people here right now – this is our little slice of that infinite space. If we shifted phase a little we’d be in someone else’s slice.”

“Can we do that? I don’t want to!” she held up a hand quickly. “I’m just curious. Like,” she hesitated as Tara conjured a pool table with the balls already racked. “Like if I wanted to visit someone can I just pop into their space?”

Tara’s gaze snapped towards the doors. “If they’re in Afterlife, then absolutely. That part’s easy. Just picture them.” She manifested two cues and handed one to Faith. “Your break.”

A dark eyebrow shot up. “Bold move. What do you mean?” she continued as she lined up her shot. “How do I know if they’re here? And where else would they be?”

The ball jumped as she struck it, and the break was an ugly one that masked Tara’s sigh. “When you can read-“

“The doors,” Faith finished for her. “Is that going to happen sometime today?”

“I assume so. It doesn’t usually take too long. Three ball in the side.” Tara hammered the shot home, and two more following, before missing one. “That said, time isn’t really a thing here so I don’t know if others have taken days or not.” For the first time, Faith noticed the absence of time. There were no clocks in the bar, neither of them wore watches and of course their cell phones hadn’t journeyed with them to the beyond.

She very nearly ran the table, only to scratch with two balls left. “Well, shit.” As Tara had predicted, the game and the beer had been good for her – easing the memory of her death as well as giving her mind the chance to work through more of the nagging questions that tickled it. A furtive glance at the doors was enough to tell her that the signs above them were still illegible, so conversation went a different way. “Do you know everything that’s happened since you’ve been gone? Can you watch down there like it’s a tv set, the way you did with my death?”

Tara sank several shots without reply before looking over. “I’ve caught the highlights. You can absolutely see what’s going on from here, but I try not to do it too often.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

The eight ball was called and fell, and Faith let out an impressed whistle. She’d been sharked, and the worst part was that Tara had warned her. “It’s too easy to do nothing but that. Later on when you see some other parts of Afterlife you’ll see people who just watch all the time and never look up. Seems like a sad way to spend your existence. Besides, the problem with seeing everything is that there are things you don’t want to see.”

“Red’s new girl?”

The question was met with audible derision as the balls were racked again. “No, actually. I’m happy for her. As much as I’d rather be down there I’m glad that Willow won’t have to spend the years alone. She deserves much better than that. I wasn’t talking about one specific thing, more about how you end up seeing people’s most private moments without their knowledge. It’s not fair to them and I’m not comfortable doing it.”

“Your break,” Faith indicated. “I get that. You’re a better person than me, though, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to help myself. I’d love to know what B’s doing right now or if Dawn said nice things at my funeral. She better have.” The words were darker than her tone. “So how do I do that?”

Two balls fell off the break, and Tara gestured to the solids. “Same way you do most things up here. Just think about it. Or if you’re like me, use a gesture to focus.” Turning away from the table, she twirled one finger in the air in clockwise circles until a window appeared that was centered on the new Summers house. “Just like that.”

Faith reached out and twirled her finger the opposite way, closing the window with a soft pop. “Cool. I’ll take a look later on. Let’s keep playing.” Even a glimpse of the house was enough to let her see the temptation. If you’d left loved ones on Earth then why not sit and watch every moment of their existence? Except, as Tara had pointed out, it meant that she would spend her posthumous time sitting in a bar and staring into a window for god only knew how long. Boring. There were so many better things to do in a bar.

Tara scratched, shaking her head ruefully. “That oughta be enough for you to win this game. Also, I think we need some music.” Faith watched on as a jukebox appeared and was populated with songs. Not an iPod, not a Bluetooth speaker setup, but a vintage jukebox that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the sixties.

“You know, T, you’ve got style. It sucks that I never got to know you down there…other than that night I wore Buffy's skin. Which, again, I gotta apologize for.”

“You really don’t. It’s long over and done, and I’m past it. I’m just happy that we’ve got the time to get to know each other now.” Faith beamed at her – at least she started to. As her gaze travelled from Tara to the doors ringing Afterlife, the signs slowly began to clear up. The words were clear, but they still didn’t make any kind of sense.

“T…what’s The Summerland?”


End file.
